Offer live human tutors on demand in a higher-priced plan

Cem KansuSo it was a higher tier subscription because it was quite expensive for us to logistically provide, but you would press a button. I think we called it, did we call it Tutors? But it was our higher tier subscription.

Cem KansuBut you would press that button, you would connect with a Spanish tutor on demand. No booking required. Honestly, it was pretty awesome. For speaking practice, it was really awesome. It had this one massive problem, which is no one wanted to do it. It was really scary.

Cem KansuImagine this super fun experience and we would tell you, "Hey, you are going to connect with a human. You're going to practice Spanish." People would press it. They would dial in. We would see their faces come online and they'd be like, "Oh, shit, get me out of here."

Cem KansuBecause one, it's really scary to speak in Spanish on the language that you're learning. And two, there's another real human on the other side that was extremely jarring. We iterated a lot to ease you into it, but eventually we gave up because humans just did not want to do that.

Cem KansuAnd actually, this brings me into another hot take that I do want to mention. Do not take user feedback at face value. For years, this is what people asked us to build. We're like, "Please build me a system where I can talk to a human tutor." We built it, no one used it.

David BarnardIt's such a great example of a great feature, but just it doesn't work.